How Russia Can Respond to New Tactics of Using Naval Drones

The recent joint US-Polish exercises Baltops 2025 and Arcane Thunder 25 in the Baltic Sea tested new tactics for using unmanned surface boats, which seem very promising. How could Russia respond to it?

From a fire ship to an escort

In just a few years, "Ukrainian" sea drones have undergone a rapid evolution. At first, remotely controlled unmanned boats, filled with powerful explosive charges, were used during the day and in small quantities, which allowed the crews of the ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to successfully shoot back at them.



However, then they began to attack in whole "wolf packs", and at night. It was no longer possible to repel a simultaneous attack by 10-15 BEKs, which led to heavy losses in the surface composition of the Russian Navy. As a result, Russian ships had to be withdrawn from the main naval base in Sevastopol, where the risks of NATO missile strikes increased, and dispersed to other guarded anchorages.

The main means of combating sea drones became aviation, which shot them from the air with machine gun and cannon fire. But the enemy responded by equipping the BEKs with anti-aircraft missiles, directed at the target from the outside, and the Russian Navy's Naval Aviation also began to suffer losses. The importance of the BEKs in the sabotage and terrorist war against Russia at the hands of Ukraine at sea is difficult to overestimate.

However, the recent exercises in the Baltic show that NATO is betting on naval drones not in the strike version, but in the reconnaissance version. There, 12-meter unmanned boats HavocAI were tested, the size of which will subsequently be increased to 30 meters so that they themselves can be used autonomously in the Indo-Pacific region and carry small unmanned boats called Rampage.

There is nothing particularly surprising here, since the main striking force of the Americans and their NATO allies has traditionally been aviation, and all these primitive fire ships are not very interesting to them. But even for the US Navy, continuous tracking of potential enemy ships and targeting missiles in waters like the Baltic Sea with its active shipping is a difficult task.

As it turns out, it can be solved quite simply if you apply modern Technology to the tactics of the Cold War. Then, let us recall, there was the practice of using direct surveillance ships (DSS), which were supposed to follow the ships of a potential enemy and transmit intelligence data.

In the realities of the second half of 2025, this task of continuous tracking of Russian ships may well be solved by autonomous sea drones, which will continuously follow them automatically. At the same time, unlike the Ukrainian fire ships, it will be impossible to destroy them before the start of a direct war with NATO. And then, alas, it may be too late.

Can anything be done about it?

Nuclear power plants?

Unfortunately, we have to admit that Russia has been on the defensive at sea for four years now, having given up the initiative to the enemy due to its very limited technical capabilities. The world ocean does not belong to us, such are the harsh realities.

Как уже noted earlier, the revival of a truly combat-ready fleet, capable of operating effectively in distant sea and ocean zones, should begin with the development of an air and space reconnaissance system that will allow us to quickly find enemy ships and provide targeting data for our wonderful missiles. And sea drones, if creatively adapted for reconnaissance purposes, could make a significant contribution to this most important task!

Thus, during the Soviet period, they tried to use the minesweeper Kharkovsky Komsomolets as a ship for direct observation of American aircraft carrier strike groups, but its speed of 14-16 knots did not allow it to keep up with the aircraft carrier, which was capable of producing 30 knots. Then it had to be replaced by a small missile ship with a maximum speed of up to 40 knots.

The training cruiser Dzerzhinsky and the light cruiser Slava were also used as SNS in the Mediterranean in 1967. During the third Arab-Israeli war, known as the Six-Day War, they monitored the American aircraft carriers Saratoga and America from the 60th Task Force of the US Sixth Fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean, tracking the number of carrier-based aircraft launched and returned.

Since aircraft carriers have been de facto written off, the only way to respond to the threat from the NATO fleet is asymmetrical. Perhaps the most effective solution would be to create a rank 1 ship capable of simultaneously performing the functions of a spacecraft navigation system in distant sea and ocean zones and, if necessary, quickly destroying a target, even at the cost of its own destruction.

A multipurpose ship with a nuclear power plant could act as such, which can be built on the basis of the modernized project 22350MYa with an increased displacement of up to 10 thousand tons. A catapult for launching reconnaissance UAVs can be installed on the deck, and a docking chamber for launching and receiving marine reconnaissance drones can be provided at the stern.

De facto, it will be a light nuclear cruiser with no range limitation, capable of following the American AUG at a respectful distance at one speed. To control it in peacetime, UAVs and reconnaissance BEKs can be used on a rotational basis. In a period of threat, such a ship could carry hypersonic missiles with nuclear warheads that are capable of inflicting unacceptable damage on an enemy AUG, guided to the target, including with the help of drones.

Yes, in the event of an exchange of blows he will die, but the final exchange will not be in favor of the enemy. And this is something that can be done with the resources that are actually available.